Tim

I'm thinking Chase Watkins may be too advanced for rookie ball. 4.2 innings, 17 total PA: 13 K's.

Sure if he does he would be an excellent full time player. People are rightly wary of someone with ok minor league numbers breaking out at age 29 and don't want to hand out starting spots based on a still small sample size of ~150 PAs. He could be legit but its still early to tell for sure. Well we have to hope because it looks like the plan is for Schwindel, Wisdom, and Ortega are all penciled in for next year. lol - None of us have the slightest idea what the plan looks like.

Happ's turnaround might be the most exciting thing happening on the field for next year.

lol - the Matt Duffy game.

12 seems spot on to me. They could be a top 10ish team if JF comes in relatively quick, doesn’t get murdered, and makes a bunch of big plays. Or they could be a bottom 10-15 team if things don’t go quite right. Not sure how to interpret your post. I'm not sure if you caught that the rating is for 12th out of 16 teams in the NFC.

Haters.

None of them are as important as launch angle and speed, but wind, spin, and altitude also play pretty big roles in total distance. Thank you. I figured wind did, but on such low trajectory, I just couldn't see it making such a drastic difference.Yeah, it seems like it would really be spin that makes a huge difference on the carry on a line drive like that. A ball with top spin is going to sink fast. But a hard hit liner with some backspin should carry much further.

That was fun.

We were doing some clutch losing, but then blew it by coming back to tie the game.

Geo living the good life

This is clutch fecal standing performance in this series.

That feels...outdated.

Here were the comments from their July update:

Yes, but that statement was in response to someone saying that he had no baseball skill at all. It was saying he had no other skill than the hitting. Hitting for average and power are typically considered different skills/tools in baseball.

Because something will have to give. Here's the list of qualified seasons in the last 5 full years(2015-19) from players who have >20% K%, .200 IsoP, and a 110+ wRC: https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=y&type=8&season=2019&month=0&season1=2015&ind=1&team=0&rost=0&age=0&filter=73235&players=0&startdate=&enddate= 18 seasons, and the only repeats are Jose Abreu, Baez, and Castellanos. Schwindel either needs to be an extreme exception to the norm in terms of skills/profile, or his approach needs to change in one direction(more BB) or the other(fewer K), otherwise the odds are very good the power will come down with everything else as pitchers adjust. Yes, but that statement was in response to someone saying that he had no baseball skill at all.

Poor Chris Davis has to be in the running for worst contract of all time right? Everyone knew it was a bad idea at the time, he had the most pronounced 'old guy' skills of anyone ever, and then they gave him the GDP of a small country and he folded as a productive player immediately. There are other contracts that maybe garnered less value-to-money ratio, but this was like watching a train ram into a car from 5 miles away and the conductor being like "yes, lets do this". Prince Fielder?

There's plenty of opportunity for a lefty masher on the bench. Whatever 1B we end up with is probably going to be LH. We know the outfield right now is heavily left handed. And with Hoerner/Bote/Wisdom's versatility we don't need to burn a bench spot on a super utility type. We can focus on having guys with leveragable skills to deploy, and early on Schwindel is showing the underlying skills of a legit lefty masher. His highest walk rate, at any level, ever (there's been a lot of levels) is 6.3%. The amount of hitting you have to do to overcome a lack of discipline/any other baseball skill is a lot, and asking that of a 29 year who has given 98 total MLB plate appearances and is on his fifth organization seems very dumb. There are ways to get less left handed than keeping this guy on the bench to hit a double twice a month. His carrying skill is slugging. I'm not sure why that keeps getting minimized/ignored.

Signing pitchers with a bunch of mileage on their arms to long-term deals for big dollars is a really quick way to get handcuffed by salary constraints without commensurate performance on the field.

Zunino is a free agent. I don't want to make a long-term commitment to an aging catcher with as many miles as Willson. So I'd trade him to get prospects and use a relatively small amount of cash to sign Zunino as a replacement.

My Master Plan - v1.2.0 I'm bored, so let's put out another one of these... Remainder of 2021: (unchanged from v1.1.0) Summary of Needs: In varying degrees of need: SP, LF, SP, 1B, CF, SS, 3B, RF, SP 2021-22 Free Agent Options SS: Correa, Seager, Story, Baez, Semien OF: Conforto, Castellanos, Rosario, Garcia, Canha, Marte Top Tier SP: Kershaw, Stroman, Gausman, Syndergaard, Gray, Rodon Mid Tier SP: Duffy, Smyly, Pineda, Paxton, Bundy, Rodgriguez, Ray, Quintana, Heaney, Archer, Matz Old Tier SP: Greinke, Verlander, Scherzer, Morton, Cueto, Kluber Actions to Take Trades: Trade Willson for prospects this winter Trade flotsam for Josh Donaldson Trade decent flotsam to SD for Wil Myers and Gore Free Agents: C: Sign Mike Zunino for 2/$10 SS: Sign Seager for 6/$180 OF: Sign Conforto for 4/$80 SP: Sign Eduardo Rodriguez for 3/$45 SP: Sign Matz for 2/$20 2022 MLB Team: 2B - Madrigal ($1) SS - Seager ($30) LF - Conforto ($20) 3B - Donaldson ($22) 1B/DH - Myers ($14 to the cap/$23 to the payroll) CF - Happ ($4.5) C - Zunino ($5) RF - Heyward ($23) Bench - Hoerner, Bote, catcher, best of 2021 tryouts ($5) SP: Hendricks ($14) SP: Rodriguez: ($15) SP: Matz: ($10) SP: Mills ($1) SP: Alzolay / Gore / Steele / Thompson ($3) RP: cast of millions ($10) That team can easily be afforded from a cap perspective at a total of $175m. And even if I've underestimated the contracts, there's plenty of room on the payroll to go higher and still leave room under the cap for the following offseason. I'd honestly add another pitcher of the Trevor Williams variety to cover the fourth spot in the rotation in case of need. They can always be moved at the deadline if someone needs those innings. It's not a dominant team, but it can compete and win in the NL Central. It puts out a pretty deep lineup for 2022 that doesn't rely on the extended tryouts of the bats this year for the lineup. If those guys do make the team, it provides coverage on the bench and/or makes others available at the deadline to keep their salaries and sell for prospects. As players like Davis reach the majors, the Cubs should take the opportunity to sell off the vets while holding their salaries to maximize the return. It also keeps the powder dry with our own prospects to use them when we are truly going for it in 2023. The younger prospects should be nearing or in the upper minors by then, and we'll have added another high draft class & large international budget. We will hopefully have some high end guys knocking on the door here plus a lot of assets to fill out the club through trades.

Still don't get why nobody wanted Davies. I mean he sucks but Cubs could have given him away for free. Somebody had to pitch in the second half. It was an either/or situation between Davies and Williams. That's my guess, anyway.

That's a bs third strike

Any reason why you're not including Banks, Williams, Santo, Fergie, etc.?

TT - I like the Upton move. It's going to be very interesting to see what happens with the luxury tax in the new CBA and how it drives behavior.

Anyone currently in a full season league can easily reach MLB within three years. There are a bunch of potentially useful players across A, A+ and AA for us right now that could be average or better big leaguers. In fact, there are way too many for me to bother listing here - we have one of the very deepest farms in the league right now. And there are a few guys in there that could be really good if things break right. Hell, even guys like Preciado, Caissie or Alcantara could be in MLB by the end of three years if they develop quickly. Those are the "possible star" prospects that I said are 3 years away. Yeah - I misread your post initially and went back and added this to my response: I think I misread your post. I thought it was saying that it would be more than three years, but you were saying it would be that third year when high impact guys could arrive. Let me list a few guys that could be contributors or stars that will reach by then: 1) Davis has the capability to be a star level player. A .900 OPS from a capable CF is a star. 2) Diechmann can definitely be a contributor. If he can figure out how to unlock his power while also making contact (instead of one at a time), he could be more. 3) Amaya could be a really good starting catcher by 2023. He's not likely a star unless he hits for more power, but a solid defensive catcher who gets on base is pretty valuable. 4) Morel could be contributing as soon as next year in a utility role. 5) Rivas can hit righties in MLB right now. If he can play the OF well enough and learn to hit lefties, he can be a good MLB starter. 6) Strumpf could be a contributor by end of next year, let alone in 2023 That's just the hitters at AA and AAA. There are a bunch of interesting relievers at those levels, too. There are also a number of SP who could be up by the end of 2023, including Kilian in AA who could be up by the end of next season. Even a guy like Jensen could be up by the end of next year even though he's down in A+ right now.